In the field of DNT communications, contact events incoming to and outgoing from a DNT capable communication-center are propagated over switched-packet data networks (SPDN) such as a wide-area-network WAN, which may include the Internet. Internet-protocol-network-telephony, a sub-set of DNT, wherein voice and data calls are handle by suitable computer equipment and software is a typical and oft used DNT implementation. Other examples include e-mail, file transfer, instant messaging electronic facsimile, and so on.
Such DNT capability as described above provides added flexibility to agents operating within a communication center and opens up new mediums of contact for clients wishing to interact with the center. For example, agents are no longer slaved to a traditional telephony system. A new breed of agent, termed a multimedia agent, works with several different media types, hence the term multimedia.
Such agents as described immediately above, will likely share a local-area-network (LAN) connection whereby individual agent personal-computer/video-display-units (PC/VDUs) may communicate with one another and with automated systems and switches within the communication center. In some cases, agents will operate DNT capable telephones. Communication centers employing data network capabilities may still practice standard computer integrated telephony (CTI) as known in the art. However, one with skill in the art will appreciate that DNT is forging huge in-roads into the field of telephony.
One IPNT medium that is part of the DNT family is the well-known chat session. A chat session is facilitated by software at each client station and at a communications server hosted somewhere in an Internet-Protocol (IP) data network (typically the Internet). A chat session is typically hosted by a facilitator or session leader, which controls the rules and regulations governing each session. Typically a session master has controls provided to him that enable him to mute other participants, eject certain individuals from a session, direct the topics, and so on.
More recently, chat-room communication has become an important tool for public interface at many DNT capable communication centers. A single agent may effectively host more than one and up to several on-going chat sessions simultaneously. In a situation such as this, certain parameters regarding the chat sessions themselves and the agents hosting them are typically observed. For example, it is desired that the topic or purpose of each chat session assigned to a particular agent agree at least somewhat with the hosting agent's skill-level. It is similarly desired that any agent hosting a chat session or sessions is not overloaded or under utilized while engaged in response to communication loads in a session or sessions.
In prior art communication centers, such parameters are manually configured for each scheduled or ongoing session. This can be problematic because levels of communication loads associated with chat sessions can vary somewhat rapidly for any given number of participants. Moreover, limits regarding a number of participants allowed in each active chat session must be manually set by agents or an administrator on be-half of agents. Because of constant fluctuations regarding communications loads and number of participants logging into any chat session, and the inconvenience associated with manual adjustment of such chat session parameters, agents are often overloaded or under utilized for significant periods of time.
A system known to the inventor and disclosed by the specification listed in the cross-reference section above allows agents to be automatically assigned, relieved, and reassigned to communication-center chat sessions and other hosted participatory sessions based on message load and skill set. The routing system described in the co-pending specification uses agent-session monitoring software and algorithms to calculate total message-load experienced by any agent participating in a chat session or sessions and, according to preset load thresholds and agent skills, balances total incoming loads such that any particular agents are not overloaded or under-utilized when engaged in such sessions. For convenience in the descriptions that follow, sessions will be referred to as chat sessions, although the inventor intends the invention to be applicable to all sorts of hosted communication sessions. Chat sessions are a convenient example for illustrating the features and functions of the invention.
Many queries initiated by customers in center-hosted chat sessions are repeated many times. For example, a query about how to activate a particular software application once it is installed will have the same answer provided the computer platform and version of the software application are constant. Many companies post frequently-asked-questions (FAQ) pages to alleviate agents from constantly answering repetitive questions having the same responses. However, FAQ pages may not contain all of the required information in their generic responses or the exact query as posed by a customer. Moreover, there may be many question/response interactions listed on a FAQ page requiring extensive scrolling by a customer to find, if available, the desired question and response. Customers may easily be intimidated by using an extensive FAQ page.
In chat applications known to the inventor and hosted through communication-center facilities, chat interaction is threaded and stored in a history database for later research. This may be accomplished regardless of whether the chat session is text-based or voice-based. For example, text-based threads originating in text chat are organized into a text database whereas voice interaction (voice chat) may be recorded and stored in a multimedia database with text copies of such interactions stored in a text database.
It has occurred to the inventor that in addition to enabling an agent engaged in chat communication to work with an acceptable message load, additional automated assistance may be provided to further reduce an agent's response requirements when answering many chat queries.
What is clearly needed is an automated method and apparatus for assisting agents participating in one or more chat sessions to quickly respond to oft-asked questions without requiring significant manual input by such an agent. Such an automated system would act to reduce agent load during sessions and convenience a customer by enabling the customer to get a direct answer through the session.